this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
446 points (96.8% liked)
Showerthoughts
34009 readers
931 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Bigger problem is going to be old fuel. Gasoline degrades over time and becomes less combustible. It also gets gummy in small passages like fuel injectors, especially with ethanol. Wiring insulation gets hard and breaks, wires corrode. Animals intrude and eat wires. Brake and fuel lines rust through, brake hoses swell shut from the inside.
You want a carbureted small block Chevy or Ford. It might still be effort to make it run, but it’ll be far more likely to scrounge up the very generic spare parts and supplies needed.
Nope.
Pre 1990 mechanically fuel injected, naturally aspirated diesels. 7.3 or 6.9 IDI, 6.2 Detroit, most Cummins industrial engines.
Diesel lasts significantly longer in storage (2+ years) than volatile gasoline (6mo max). I've even seen some non-mixed diesel last 10+ years when stored right.
But the biggest deal is that compression ignition engines can basically run on literally any vaguely flammable liquid substance. You can make biodiesel from a ton of stuff ranging from oil bearing crops to animal fat. They run way longer on oil changes because they don't dump as much thin gas into their oil. And there are no real consumables like spark plugs, distributor caps/rotors/points.
In a post-society situation real fossil fuels or petroleum lubricants or parts will not be available.
I'm always annoyed that you don't see more wood spirit(aka methanol) in the post-apocalypse. They'll make en ethanol still and then complain about a lack of fuel for their diesel generator as they're standing next to a forest.
Wait, you can’t make ethanol from wood? I guess that would make sense, because otherwise you’d see a lot more wood liqueurs, I’ve only ever heard of alcohol made from maple syrup, birch, and pine (but that last one was from a rural Austrian town and they aren’t allowed to sell it elsewhere, so it might be a little more poisonous than the others). This is going to be a rabbit hole.
Edit: you can, but it’s not the traditional way of turning wood into alcohol, and an efficient method has only recently been developed.
Just a PSA.
Trees (and plants in general) are made of sugars.
That’s why I was initially surprised, but the og method involved high heat to break down the woodiness of the fibers, and that leads to methanol, not ethanol. You do need sugars for either though, afaik, because the yeast has to eat something either way.